


Out Of Hell

by Kareh



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for the Mutant Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 15:32:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12484892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kareh/pseuds/Kareh
Summary: "If he had been in his right mind, maybe he would have noticed the signs that his brothers had already been and gone."Filling in some of what happens to Leonardo in the immediate aftermath of the mutagen bomb.





	Out Of Hell

**Author's Note:**

> So I have this theory that the amount of time that Leonardo spent alone in the Mutant Apocalypse, convinced that he had failed in his mission to protect his family, with memories of fighting the Shredder and the borderline abusive way that he was parented (sorry Master Splinter fans) was what resulted in the version of Leonardo that we saw in the Mutant Apocalypse - the mutagen pretty much allowed all of that to rise to the surface and take over, to the point where Leonardo became the thing that he hated the most in the end.
> 
> Boy, it's a good thing all of that was an AU, huh?
> 
> Please forgive any errors - especially that which relate to the antimony of mutant turtles. I have no idea how this stuff works, I just wrote the sort of thing that I wanted to read but couldn't find.

 

He knows that something is wrong when he opens his eyes to the dark, green sky above him and ringing in his ears. He can’t remember where he is or how he got here – or even what the sky usually looks like. He moves his eyes from the sky to look at his surroundings – the world around him is in ruins. That makes him frown – it shouldn’t be this way. Where are all the buildings? Where are the people? Where is he?

His body feels heavy, but he moves his hand to touch his head. Why is lifting up his hand so exhausting? Why does he feel like he was hit by a truck? Why does his head hurt so much? His hand feels wet and sticky against his head – when he pulls his hand back to study it, he realises his skin is no longer green but stained with red.

He looks down at his body, and sees the pool of red from underneath him. It’s then that he realises that he’s dying. He has to be. Frowning, he wonders why he doesn’t feel much pain. If he’s bleeding this much, he should be in agony. He likely shouldn’t even be awake. He frowns at his body and begins to pat himself down slowly, trying to figure out the source of the blood. He’s sore and he has some nasty cuts all over – but nothing seems that bad. He reaches back to touch his shell – he’s surprised not to feel the familiar hardness of his shell but instead what seems to primarily be tissue – he rolls slightly onto his side, ignoring the pain and twists his neck to get a better look as he traces the remains of his shell with his fingertips, but he can’t quite reach or see the true extent of the damage. He supposes that he ought to be grateful for that – from what he can feel, it’s like a good portion of the top layer of his shell has been torn off.

That explains the blood then.

He doesn’t remember closing his eyes, but he must have because the next thing he knows, his eyes are snapping open as his entire body is on fire. He tears at his skin, as if he can rip it off to cool himself down. He squirms on the ground around him, trying to put himself out but he can’t. He wonders, dimly, why he can’t smell smoke or see the fire. But he knows he’s on fire nevertheless. He’s screaming for someone, anybody to help him, but the world around him is nothing but ruins.

He must lose consciousness again, for a while, because the next time he opens his eyes, there’s a loud crash as the remains of a building finally crumble. The noise is so familiar that it startles again – he remembers all at once. He remembers the bomb. He remembers his brothers. He remembers the screams – his own, he’s sure, but also his brothers. He remembers the moment that it hit him. He remembers the burning. The feeling of being crushed. He was so afraid.

Where are his brothers? The sudden fear that he feels for his brothers fills him with adrenaline that enables him to sit upright for the first time, despite the pain. He looks around him, but the world is in ruins. He can’t even see any bodies from all of the rubble that’s piled on top. He knows it’s pointless, but he screams his brothers’ names anyway.

There’s no one here.

He’s alone.

 

* * *

 

He starts to search for his brothers once he realises that he isn’t dying – at least, not yet. With his shell a giant open wound, he knows he can’t survive for long but that doesn’t matter to him, now. Nothing seems as important as finding his brothers.

His legs shake from underneath him, his ears are still ringing and he can’t really hold his balance. He makes it a few steps until he stumbles, so he crawls until he finds a sword – his sword - from under the rubble and uses it to help keep himself upright. He ends up half shuffling, half crawling his way out from the rubble.

He hopes his brothers aren’t trapped under the rubble – there’s so much of it that there’s no way he can dig through it all, he’d never find them. He’s not sure if his voice would even carry through, but he keeps yelling his brothers’ names, anyway. Just in case.

It occurs to him that he should find the lair – that’s where they’d go, right? If his brothers made it. He scolds himself – of course they made it. Of course they’re alive. They have to be.

There are very few buildings still standing – and so much rubble covering the streets that he’s not sure how to make it underground. He can’t move very fast or even stay awake for very long. He moves about a foot or so at a time before he crashes and face plants in the ruins, before waking up sometime later to try again. He’s not sure how long he’s out for each time – it could be minutes or hours. Sometimes, the burning sensation comes back and he knows it’s the mutagen starting to change him. He can’t move at all when the burning starts and it makes it even harder to keep moving even after it passes.

The sewers are crumbling and caving in – but it’s easier to navigate than being topside. After all, he had spent years underground with his brothers before their father had allowed them topside. He has to backtrack a couple of times and try another route because some of it has completely collapsed or the terrain is too difficult for him to navigate in his current state, but he eventually makes it home.

He can’t help but let out a few tears when he makes it home. The lair isn’t in too bad shape, all things considering. The walls are cracked and in some spots, the ceiling has collapsed in others from the force of the bomb above, but it still looks recognisable, at least. It makes sense considering all the work that his brother had put into making it secure. He knows by the silence that his brothers aren’t here, but he still checks every room. He checks Donatello’s lab last of all – finding a first aid kit and uses a mirror to try and clean his shell. It’s worse than he had thought. He finds some antibiotics, clinging to hope that the burning episodes are the result of an infection and not that he’s slowly mutating into something else.

There’s enough food in the kitchen cupboards that he can survive for the time being, so that’s what he does. Survives. It’s not like he’s in any shape to leave, anyway. It’s surreal to be sleeping in his home as if nothing has happened when it seems like most of the world – or, at the very least New York, is destroyed, but that’s what he does.  
He has no concept of time. Has no idea if it’s been days or weeks or months. The burning periods get worse, longer and more intense. He loses more and more time to the episodes where he is no longer himself. He wakes up to find the lair more of a wreck than before, as if somebody is sneaking in during the night to trash it. The first time he hunts for an intruder, but later realises that it’s him.

He can feel his body changing, but he is too frightened to look in a mirror. He can’t stay here. Not if he’s mutating. What if his brothers come back and find him like this? He’s starting to forget things. Starting to change. He could be dangerous.

If he had been in his right mind, maybe he would have noticed the signs that his brothers had already been and gone. He might have noticed that Metalhead is gone and that someone had been to collect Chompy and Ice Cream Kitty. But with the lair in such a state and their belongings scattered all over, it was hard to see what was missing.

* * *

 

In his moments of lucidity, Leonardo remembers. He knows there were good times, but it gets increasingly difficult to recall them as the mutagen seems to feed on his nightmares.

He did not hesitate to push his brothers off the building when the mutagen bomb was coming their way. He was raised to be his brothers shield, after all. He was built to protect them. It wasn’t the first time Leonardo had sacrificed himself for his brothers. He had spent the better part of fifteen years squashing down almost every part of his personality in order to protect his brothers. Master Splinter hadn’t raised him to be equal to his brothers. Leonardo was sure that his brothers would likely argue that he was raised above them, but in the hierarchy of the Hamato household, Leonardo knew he came at the bottom. He was the last to eat but the first to clean up. The last to bed as he checked the lairs perimeters and the first to rise in the morning.

In another world, maybe, Leonardo would have learned something from the many conversations with his brothers and, in pushing them out of the way, he would have thought to save himself, too.

But not in this one.

**Author's Note:**

> I really want to turn this all into a Mutant Apocalypse fix it wherein we have explanations for everything that happens and the turtles meet one another much sooner and everything is slightly less angsty and Leonardo maybe still mutates but like, he ends up looking far less ugly than he does in the arc - but I'm also a final year art student with a part time job, so maybe not.
> 
> I have the head canon that, in this timeline, all of the brothers somehow found their way to the lair after the bomb but missed one another - with Donnie and Raph together making it home first but leaving to look for the others, then Mikey a few days later but doesn't even spend one night alone in the lair as it's too painful and Leonardo last - he stays the longest, for a few weeks, waiting on his brothers. I have the idea that all of them left a note for each other to find - but none of them are thinking clearly enough to look for a note or a sign that one of their brothers had been there before them or that the notes might have fallen from where they were pinned and if the lair is already messy and worn that it wouldn't be so obvious.


End file.
